HSA Uplifts Families through Vertical Wave IP Unified Communications

Human Services Association (HSA)

Background

The Human Services Association (HSA) is one of the largest not-for-profit service agencies in the Los Angeles area, assisting 20,000 clients per year through programs for individuals, families, children and senior citizens. Services range from daycare to parenting classes to transportation support, and are provided to clientele in both Spanish and English. The agency’s four offi ces field hundreds of calls each day. As demand for services increased, so did the need for a more efficient and cost-effective phone system.

HAS’s legacy systems were, in some cases, 10 years old, and offered few capabilities that contributed to the productivity of the operation. Each office had its own standalone phone system. Routing and transferring calls among offices had to be done manually using outside lines, racking up substantial toll charges along the way. In addition, HSA had to hire an expensive third-party technician every time it wanted to add or change an extension on one of the individual networks, which happened on a regular basis.

Solution

Fusion Communications, a long-time Vertical Communications® partner, approached HSA to discuss how it could improve the agency’s communications capabilities.

“HSA has an outstanding reputation for providing much-needed services to a large portion of our community,” said Steve Muse, president of Fusion. “But like many not-for-profits, they have to be especially mindful of financial and technical considerations. We knew that Vertical’s Wave IP platform could deliver great productivity gains for the organization, in a non-disruptive and cost-effective manner, giving the agency the ability to assist its clientele much more effectively.”

Fusion integrated all four sites with a single digital phone system through Vertical’s WaveNet network management tool, creating direct-dial phone extensions for the agency’s 100-plus employees. The Wave IP solution also gave the not-for-profit organization the ability to extend much of its legacy investment by incorporating HSA’s existing MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) technology into the Wave IP network, thus eliminating the need for additional hardware.

To handle HSA’s specific call routing needs, Fusion also implemented Wave IP’s Call Classifier application. HSA manages eight sub-departments in its Senior Services division, seven under Family Services, and a separate data tree for administration. In the past, employees had to manually handle calls for all of these departments. The process is now streamlined by Call Classifier through a series of automated menus and sub-menus that enable calls to be intelligently routed to the appropriate destination via a series of prompts in both English and Spanish.

Results

With the Wave IP’s embedded ViewPoint unified communications application, HSA staff can use the presence management capability to identify which colleagues are available on the system at any given time. They can also take advantage of the system’s soft phone feature and conduct calls with their desktops and a headset, adding convenience and circumventing the need for new handsets.

“We love that our system can track the phone activities of everyone in the operation,” said HSA IT Manager Manuel Maiztegui. “Our agents are more comfortable with the soft phone capabilities than they ever were with their desk phones.”

With the Wave IP system, HSA staff can easily transfer calls among co-workers across the network, saving the agency a significant expense, and vastly improving the client experience.

“Our most basic need was to connect our four locations, which Wave IP accomplished brilliantly,” noted Maiztegui. “Collaboration among our staff is completely seamless. Our employees now function as a consolidated team.”

Maiztegui is thrilled, too, to be able to manage the entire system from one central location. “The ability to manage the system from my office is a huge benefit and a considerable cost savings,” he said. “I now have control over any adjustments on the system. We have moved countless extensions this year, and the changes are almost effortless compared to scheduling an outside technician to come out here, which sometimes took days.”

Maiztegui also estimates that Call Classifier has helped address client calls more swiftly and increased productivity by approximately 20 percent.

“The Wave IP solution is far superior to what we had before. It lets us deliver better service to the people of Southwest Los Angeles, and that’s what it’s all about.”